CANOVA Four Tempos vol. II continues Luigi Spina’s photographic study of Antonio Canova’s plaster models, preserved almost entirely in the plaster cast gallery at Possagno. Published by 5 Continents Editions in 2021, it forms the second part of a four-volume editorial project created with the Pallavicino Foundation in Genoa for the Canovian celebrations of 2019–2022. This volume turns chiefly toward myth, gathering images of Dancer with Finger on Chin, Daedalus and Icarus, Theseus Defeats the Centaur, Naiad, Pius VII Praying, Venus and Adonis, and Sleeping Nymph.
Spina’s subject is not simply the finished image of classical beauty. His photographs attend to the plaster model as a working stage in Canova’s process, and particularly to the bronze nails, or repères, that enabled the transformation from plaster into marble. These small technical markers become evidence of translation: points where an idea is measured, transferred, and gradually given material permanence. The book consequently frames sculpture as both an ideal form and a record of labor, mediation, and change.
The volume’s significance lies in this sustained attention to an intermediate object often overshadowed by Canova’s celebrated marbles. Myth is present in the chosen subjects, but so is the physical intelligence of making—surface, proportion, structure, and the latent movement contained in plaster. Spina’s wider photographic practice, which explores the physical impact of classical sculpture and the links between art, faith, and ancient cultural roots, gives the project a distinctly contemplative register without reducing the works to illustration.
With 55 illustrations across 84 pages, the English-language hardcover is a focused object for readers interested in Canova, sculpture, and the photographic interpretation of artistic process. For collectors, its particular value is the clarity of its premise: it preserves a sustained encounter with the Possagno models while showing how photography can make visible the passage between conception and finished sculpture.
